Electromagnetic metamaterial
Examples are:
- Emulation of negative refractive index
- Emulation of some nonlinear behaviour (for switching functionalities?)
- Metamaterial lenses (smaller than conventional methods) (related stuff: phased array antennas, Fresnel zone plates)
Advanced APM will make these possible for optical wavelengths.
All of these are nice to have technologies.
But note that none of these seem necessary as a critical component in a basic nanofactory.
Contents
Microwaves
Metamaterials for microwaves are already explorable with today's non atomically precise technology since the wavelengths and necessary structure sizes are in the centimetre range.
Terahertz waves
Metamaterial structures are still quite big and accessible today. There is a different issue though. It's very difficult to produce high power THz waves with today's (2021) technology.
And with advanced APM we may gain the capability to generate THz waves in much higher intensities than today.
(TODO: eventually investigate THz wave generation means that would be enabled through gem-gum-tech)
Infrared and visible light
Violet is the smallest possible wavelength that is not yet ionizing (chemical bond breaking). But the wavelength of free moving light (or single mode fiber optical waveguide?) is still huge compared to the atomic scale.
Application example:
- Ultra-compact optical particle accelerators
Useful for all sorts of analysis purposes.
With advanded APM all sorts of nanoparticles could be accelerated. Not just elemental particles.
Bigger sizes => less charge per mass => less acceleration though.
One could say that it's a 1D optical accelerator tracks are a metmaterial since there's a 1D linear pattern that causes desired optical properties. Stacking many of them sideways gives large repetitive patterns in 3D.
Maybe things like this could be used as rocket engine.
As a worrying aspect: Note that these could also be abused as dangerous and insidious invisible inaudible radiation weapon. Intentional or by accident.
UV?, X-rays??
With strong bonds or self healing metallic bonds it may be possible to get a bit into the UV range without creating a system that rapidly destroys itself during usage.
